…the average flight time from Dubai to Bahrain is clocked at 57 minutes… not bad, one would think, for travel time within the Arabian Gulf… less than an hour to be transported across part of the Middle East… not bad, indeed, if the rest of the peripheral ‘time’of travel is thrown in… today, Friday, March 23rd, lapsing ever so laboriously toward Saturday, March 24th, is proving a bit of an Albert Einsteinian/Stephen Hawking-ian sort of ‘bending’ of that oft-bruited ‘travel-space’ thing… let me explain in more ‘Master-Gallacher-of-this-world’ timing… getting packed and ready to proceed to the airport can take anywhere up to 45 – 60 minutes (just where did I mislay that toothbrush, Mabel?)… comes the taxi or Uber-camel, or other chariotly means of driving to the airport – journey time (dependent on traffic) say, another 40 minutes — disembarkation at the departures terminal is fully 90 minutes before flight time… proceeding through check-in, passport control, and wending one’s way to the boarding gate, then to get on a bus (yes, a bus) as there seems to be a lack of airbridges (sum’thing the airport planners seem to have missed in air termini planning these days)… now the aircraft has the door closed, and is taxiing back from the gate, only a further 20 minutes later than scheduled flight time (not bad for a busy airport)…

…another 10 minutes pass, and the engines up-whine switches to engines down-whine, and the plane trundles back to the gate… the pilot has noticed sum’thing amiss and, quite correctly takes no chances with passenger safety… wants the ground engineers to have a peek at sum’thing in the cockpit… 115 minutes later, with no further ‘this-is-your-pilot’chat to enlighten us as to what gremlin is frustrating the take-off, and having sat amidst the discomfort of growing passenger grumblings and latent outbreak of hostilities toward all things airline company, the cheerful announcement is made that we’re going back to the terminal proper… on the trusty bus… and the flight will not be on this bird… the next flight will be 4 and half hours later… as I sit here typing this, the clock is ticking inexorably toward that revised flight slot… and so far the original 57 minutes travel time quoted above in my blog opening has expanded to 550 minutes,or 9 and a quarter hours, and we haven’t taken off yet… it’s at times like these when its REALLY good just to stay at home… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

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Last time I had a problem during a flight (well, several. Got stuck due to snow in Paris and couldn’t fly until the day after), they switched the plane off and on again (thankfully we were still on the ground) and it worked! I hope it all goes well, eventually, Seumas. 🙂

Well Seamus, this is were patience and a lot of “mindfulness” 😊 Come in. I was on a flight yesterday . Only from England to Sweden.
For well over an hour we sat, well knowing all was ready for take off when we were told that a passenger was missing.
She was called in the cabin, at the airport etc.
In the end the holdd had to be opened and her bag found and off loaded.. fun game is air travel.
Many such stories ……but will stop
miriam

What a headache and yet who would want to fly on a plane where something was wrong. In flying it’s “much” better to be safe than sorry. I once had to wait four extra hours in Chicago because of strong winds and missed my second flight. They did give me a voucher for $7.00 to buy something to eat though. Luckily there was a McDonald’s restaurant in the airport and I could buy one of their fish meals. 😀 — Suzanne